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MISCELLANEOUS TOM LEHRER SONGS

The Derivative Song (1974)

Words by Tom Lehrer
Tune: "There'll be Some Changes Made"
American Mathematical Monthly, 81 (1974) 490:

You take a function of x and you call it y,
Take any x-nought that you care to try,
You make a little change and call it delta x,
The corresponding change in y is what you find nex',
And then you take the quotient and now carefully
Send delta x to zero, and I think you'll see
That what the limit gives us, if our work all checks,
Is what we call dy/dx,
It's just dy/dx.


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